Short Takes on the News: Speed Traps and Protected Speech, Justice Scalia, and Law School News

There is an interesting case out of Missouri where a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction forbidding the town of Ellisville from prosecuting individuals for flashing their lights to warn of speed traps. The town has an ordinance which restricts flashing lights. The judge, however, said that individuals flashing their lights as a warning was expressive conduct and likely protected by the First Amendment. The ABA Journal has more information on the case with a link to the opinion. I’ve made lengthy road trips in the past with a CB radio in the car. Among the usual trucker chatter were warnings of where “bears” were operating including mile marker details. That isn’t much different from this case in my opinion, other than how the warning was given.

Justice Scalia was out and about earlier in the week. He spoke at the University of Hawaii law school and suggested that while the Korematsu case upholding the internment of Japanese citizens was wrong, he wouldn’t be surprised in the Court issued a similar ruling in the future. Quote the Justice:

“Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.”

I understand that Guantanamo Bay has a warm climate at the very least. CBS News has a report on the visit. He also commented that the Court will have the last word on the NSA data collection. As he said in his own charming way:

“The executive knows very well what’s going on and what the threats are. Congress can have hearings for accessing threats and find out what’s going on,” Scalia said. “We can’t have hearings. We sit back and let them bring stuff to us.”

This reminds me of the old saying that if one wants to know the truth about a disputed issue at trial, just ask twelve people who weren’t involved.

In a little bit of law school news there is a report that the Charleston Law School is up for sale. The prospective buyer is for-profit InfiLaw. Some legislators in South Carolina want to bring the law school to the College of Charleston or the University of South Carolina as a public institution. How this transaction goes down will depend on local politics. The State has the full report illustrated by a nice picture of the law library.

The New York Law Journal reports on the downsizing of the Albany Law School in New York. Layoffs and buyouts are on the table. There was apparently a discussion between the administration and the faculty on how to reduce costs and increase revenues. One idea floated by the faculty was to admit lesser qualified students to increase enrollment and revenues. From the article:

One Albany Law professor said a “small but vocal minority” of faculty want the school to lower its standards to boost its tuition revenues and lessen the chances of layoffs. “It is a very selfish, selfish endeavor,” the professor said. “They are really trying to save their jobs, but they’ve ginned this up to make it look like we are denying academic rights.”

Faculty members are self-serving? That never would have crossed my mind after some 36 years in legal education. No. Never.

And while we are on the subject of declining enrollments, let’s take a look at the latest statistics from the LSAC:

As of 1/24/14, there are 187,726 fall 2014 applications submitted by 26,379 applicants. Applicants are down 12.6% and applications are down 13.7% from 2013. Last year at this time, we had 51% of the preliminary final applicant count. Last year at this time, we had 57% of the preliminary final application count.

Disclaimer

Just in case you don't get it: The views expressed are solely those of the blog post author and should not be attributed to anyone else, meaning they do not necessarily represent the views of any organization that the post author is affiliated with or with the views of any other author who publishes on this blog.